One of the things that was most striking to me about the texts we analyzed this week was how much my personal opinions wavered back and forth. I usually have a pretty strong opinion that I stay firm to in each of these units we are covering. There are compelling arguments in all of the texts we looked at.
The Seattle Times' article and letter-to-the-editor coupled with the NPR News article were particularly interesting. The Seattle Times guest speaker represents a large population of people who are working on minimum wage with little benefits, while also supporting a family. When I read the letter-to-the-editor, I was offended by the ignorance of the writer. To say that people shouldn't complain about minimum wage because they could just move or go get a different job or not have children is acting as if everyone has an equal opportunity to move or get any job they want that one would deem as a "career." The writer said people need to get new skills that would be applicable to higher paying jobs. Where does one acquire those skills? Usually through education, and education costs a lot of money. So then one asks - where do they get the money for education? If all the people who are on well-fare or work minimum wage jobs for their only income went to school on scholarship, there wouldn't be nearly enough money in each of those scholarships to go around. The writer is completely disregarding the circumstances that these minimum-wage-workers might come from.
The NPR News article highlighted some interesting points regarding workers supporting their families on minimum wage. These families rely on programs like food stamps, which are funded by income tax payers. This poses the issue that a lot of people's livelihood is supported by other peoples taxes. Whether or not this is a good system to help people support their families, it causes a lot of people to resent these people on minimum wage who rely on food stamps to feed their families. So... where does it end? We need people to occupy these jobs, but we need people to be able to support their families. But we also need people to support the people that sell them their fast food, and they will be extremely disinclined to do so if it comes out of their pocket.
The Mark Twain short story is a prime example of someone becoming extremely successful in a capitalist economy, using only a bank loan to gather the necessary funds for his life, his wife's life, and his friend's life. However, this story is extremely idealized - yes, it does show the possibility of the "rags to riches" scenario, but with extremely unrealistic sequences of events. People can become successful off of bank loans, but the problem is no bank would loan money to someone with extremely low income or a bad credit score. So if the story were to actually represent a real capitalist economy and its ins and outs, the Brothers - representing the bank - would have never made a loan to such a man. They based their decision off of the fact that he seemed intelligent and honest - but how can one possibly place those characteristics on someone based off a first glance? So -- is a communist economy actually a good idea for America, like the movie trailer Inequality for All suggests? With the top 1% in control of the United State's business and politics, I highly doubt that sort of economy will show its face in American economics anytime soon.
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